Hello friends, it’s been awhile.
These past few weeks I’ve been…stuck. I seem to have lost the fire that burned in me in the dead of winter. I lost the spark, lost the inspiration, lost the muse. When I tried to write, nothing would come. When I tried to pray, no one would answer. Before I knew it, life insidiously returned to that dreadful game of just “going through the motions”.
I’ve no need to worry, however. I’m coming to learn that these periods are inevitably going to come throughout my life. Despite my best intentions, I just can’t be inspired all the time. Sometimes I have to simply live and trudge through the muck before inspiration and creativity decide to return.
As many of you know, travel is a tool that works for me in these situations. When I feel stuck, I need to move. I need to change my perspective. I need to get out of the bubble that has inevitably enveloped me. I decided to take an impromptu trip to Puerto Rico with my friend last week, and to no surprise the light began to shine again. It didn’t set off the tsunami of faith and creativity that Ireland did, but I finally began to experience some cracks in the walls of dullness and numbness. I plan to write more about my trip in the future, as well as finish the Confessions project, but for today I just need to write. I’ve been holding onto something, and I just need to get it out.
Let me tell you a story.
A few weeks ago, I drove into New York City for a friend’s housewarming party. If you’ve never driven in NYC, I’ll be the first to tell you it is not a pleasant experience. Add a pickup truck and a puppy-in-tow to the mix, and you’ve got the perfect ingredients for a shitstorm. Admittedly, getting into Manhattan wasn’t all that bad; things only turned south when I began to look for parking. It had been awhile since I’d stepped foot in the Big Apple, and I had forgotten just how stressful and hectic it was. I’ve transitioned from a city-boy to a suburban beach-man, and it seems my memory has faded with the change.
It was awful.
Pedestrians darting across every intersection, bikes whizzing by inches away from the truck, and it felt like every forward motion was I made was wrong and somehow my fault. I was stressed-out and overstimulated, and I desperately wanted the adventure to end, so I darted into the nearest parking garage I could find. I had parked in those dingy city garages many times in my life, and I assumed I had reached a safe haven. As I pulled in I saw a family of blond tourists waiting for their car, standing in the middle of the path. Naturally I stopped, took a breath, and decided to wait for the attendant to guide me towards the next right move. Eventually, he pulled up in the blond family’s car and I got his attention as quickly as I could. Mind you, at this point half of my truck was sticking out into the street, resulting in a barrage of beeps and unintelligible slurs. I needed an answer, and I needed it fast. I finally locked eyes with him and he gave me a frantic hand motion that I could only interpret as one thing: “THE TRUCK WON’T FIT”.
So there I was, with a family of tourists giving me the death-stare, a parking garage attendant signaling me to GTFO, and a hoard of angry drivers behind me increasing with each passing minute. As soon as I saw the signal, my flight response immediately kicked in. I put the truck in reverse and stepped on the gas without even thinking. The only problem was, at that exact moment a father and his two young children were walking directly behind my car.
It’s difficult to explain what happened in the next second (maybe even less). Every time I think about it, I come to the same conclusion - there’s just no way I had enough time to stop. I remember being in panic mode, turning my head to the left to look behind me as I simultaneously hit the gas. I remember seeing the faintest silhouette of a small girl in my rear view mirror. The next moment..I just don’t know. It felt like for that split second, something took over. My reflexes reacted faster than they ever have in my life, faster than any human should be capable of. I remember the pulsating surge of adrenaline pouring through my entire body. I remember that when it was all over I had somehow stopped, inches away from what could have been the singular most awful moment of my life. For the next few minutes, I was frozen with shock.
Waking me out of my momentary stupor was a loud crash on the back of my truck bed. This was perhaps the most confusing part of the experience, because it was far too late to indicate that I hit anyone. It turns out, I didn’t. The father, like any father would be, was pissed off and took a nice whack at my car. I looked into my rearview mirror and saw him quickly approaching the passenger side of the vehicle, and all I could do was humbly accept whatever he wanted to dish out. I even rolled down my window for him.
“You almost hit my kid, asshole!” He shouted
All I could muster was, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
And just like that, it was all over. The father collected his kids and they continued towards their destination. The blond family - watching this entire saga go down - was standing in front of the truck like a herd of deer in headlights. I was in shock, my insides twisting and turning, but I instinctively knew I had to get the hell out of there. I checked my mirrors about seven hundred times and pulled away, eventually finding parking ten minutes later. The physical experience was over, but the resulting mental and spiritual experience had only just begun.
What proceeded from here was one of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had. I don’t know if it was because of the adrenaline or the shock or the stress, but my mind began playing out each and every scenario that could have happened. Not only that, but it was almost as if I was experiencing each alternate reality as real, one after the other.
What if I didn’t stop?
Wait, did I stop?
Feelings of dread and remorse and sadness struck me down to the bones. I had no malicious intent of course, but what if I did something so horrible, even if I didn’t mean it? The shame, the remorse, the regret - I don’t think there would be any coming back from that for me. By the grace of God this was not how the events transpired, but the experience opened up a world of perspective previously unknown to me.
Once the shock started to wear off and my adrenaline levels waned, I started to come back to reality, and with that my heart became filled with one thing: gratitude. In my moment of weakness, something intervened. Something greater than myself came to my aid and guided me and everyone around me to safety. I simply didn’t have enough time to stop. It makes no sense, but it also makes all the sense in the world.
If you’ve been reading my writings over the last year and a half, you’ll know that I like to talk about the butterfly effect, the principle that every single action we take ripples into our future and creates the current experience we call “life”. There is no better example of this than the events that transpired on that fateful Sunday. If this was six years ago, I would have had two opened tall-boys in my cockpit, likely a few deep by the afternoon. My senses and reflexes would have been limited because I spent no time refining them in physical training. That plus an afternoon buzz, and there’s no chance that I could have stopped. That little girl would be dead, and I would have an eternal mark of regret on my soul. Something guided me, yes, but I was also in the right position to allow for that guidance.
The moral of this story is that despite how it can so often feel, everything matters. Whatever you do, always try to do the right thing. Keep learning, keep growing, keep training, keep changing. Unlike what is popularly portrayed, you may never “get” anything from it. You may never get validation, recognition or fame. You may never get wealth or anything you desire. But maybe - just maybe - that day will come when someone else’s life is in your hands and all of your faculties are challenged. And maybe all of those little decisions that felt so difficult and so tiresome will amount to something as extraordinary as sparing the life of an innocent stranger.
You never know.
As I look back today, I imagine that little girl eating dinner with her family, going on playdates, growing up and encountering all the good and bad that life has to offer. These thoughts bring tears of joy and gratitude and every beautiful emotion that exists. She gets to live - to keep going - and that’s about all any of us can ever ask for.
Sobriety is good.
Humanity is good.
God is good.